Sarah Wilson

Just finished a similar analysis for my contest station vertical. Modeling shows diminishing returns after about 24 radials for elevated systems. Your proposed change should give you maybe 0.5dB improvement - worth doing if you have the wire and time.

This is exactly why I keep both modes configured in WSJT-X. Operators typically choose FT8 for maximum decoding performance and FT4 for speed when signal conditions are strong enough. When conditions start deteriorating, I switch from FT4 back to FT8. Nice to have options depending on what the bands are doing!

Don't stress about it, honestly directed nets are pretty straightforward once you've heard one go by. The net control station (NCS) will open the net and ask for check-ins, that's your cue — you just transmit your callsign clearly and wait. They'll acknowledge you, maybe ask if you have traffic or just log you as a check-in, and that's basically it. You don't have to say anything fancy. A directed net means NCS controls who talks and when, so you don't just jump in whenever. Round table is more like a casual conversation where people just take turns. The tuesday evening local ones are usually pretty relaxed and the NCS folks have heard every new ham stumble through their first check-in, they genuinely don't mind. Just give your call phonetically if you're nervous about it being heard clearly and you'll be fine.

Repeaters use CTCSS tones because they often operate in environments with lots of interference - the sub-audible tone ensures the repeater only responds to signals that were definitely meant to be repeated. That 141.3 tone is very common - it's actually known as the "traveler tone" and used widely on GMRS and some amateur repeaters for easy access.

so i finally participated in a full simulated emergency exercise with our local ARES group and i honestly had no idea how different it is from just working the radio in your shack. we were doing a simulated flood scenario where the county EOC lost all normal comms and we had to stand up a net and pass welfare traffic for about 3 hours with changing conditions thrown at us by the exercise coordinators. first thing that humbled me was my go-bag. i thought i had everything dialed in but like 20 minutes in i realized i had forgotten a way to actually mount my HT antenna properly so i was just kind of holding it up with one hand while trying to write with the other. and the logging, oh man, dont even get me started. i was using paper logs and my handwriting under stress is apparently terrible, the net control could barely read what i was sending back. the experienced guys made it look so easy. one of the elmers in our group was running a mobile rig off a small battery bank and he had this whole system for organizing message forms that i want to steal for myself. anyone else have stories from drills or real deployments where something unexpected taught you a lesson? im trying to build a better system before the next exercise in the fall.

the LM386 hum issue is almost always either a ground loop or RF getting into the audio stage, and with a direct conversion receiver those two problems show up constantly because your IF is basically audio frequency so any 60hz noise has nowhere to hide. the wall wart is suspect for sure but before you swap it try wrapping your audio wiring, especially anything going to the volume pot, in some shielded wire or at least keep the leads really short and close to the board. i spent probably two weekends debugging an almost identical build a few years back and it turned out my pot wires were running right next to the oscillator section and picking up all kinds of garbage. also worth checking: whats your decoupling look like on the VCC line going into the 386? i usually put a 100ohm resistor in series with the supply to that chip followed by a 100uf and a 0.1uf to ground right at the pin, makes a huge difference. the datasheet kind of glosses over how much the 386 cares about clean power.

i just use a slim jim made from ladder line, rolls up in my bag and does the job for most hilltop stuff. probably not the answer you wanted lol but for casual portable ops i cant be bothered hauling a yagi. if youre doing actual weak signal EME or tropo stuff thats different but for repeaters and local ssb contacts the omnidirectional pattern is way more practical imo

so ive been putting off building my own antennas for way too long, always just bought pre-made stuff or used a buddipole when i was portable. finally sat down this weekend and built a simple 40m dipole out of some 14 AWG stranded wire i had laying around in the garage. cut each leg to about 33.5 feet going off the standard 468/f formula, soldered up the feedpoint to a SO-239 i pulled off an old dummy load chassis, and hung it up inverted-V style with the apex at about 30 feet off a tree branch. center support is just a piece of PVC with a hole drilled through it, nothing fancy. SWR at the bottom of 40m is around 1.4:1 which honestly surprised me in a good way, but up around 7.250 it climbs to like 2.8:1 and my rig starts complaining. i havent put a choke on the feedline yet, which im guessing might be part of it? or do i just need to trim the legs a little? the wire is insulated if that matters, i know that changes things slightly compared to bare wire. also wondering if anyone has strong opinions on using a 1:1 balun vs just a coax choke at the feedpoint for a basic dipole like this. ive read like 50 different forum threads and opinions seem all over the place on this one.

so ive been wanting to do this for probably two years now and last weekend i finally just did it. built a little rockmite clone (well sort of, i made some mods) and threw it in my bag with a 9v battery pack and a random wire antenna and drove out to a state park about 40 minutes from my house. first contact was a guy in ohio, im in virginia, and i was running maybe 400mw. four hundred milliwatts. that still blows my mind a little. the band was 40m and conditions werent great honestly but it worked. had a couple other contacts too, one was pretty rough and we never really got a full exchange done but thats fine. the whole rig fits in like a gallon ziplock bag. i know thats not revolutionary for people who have been doing this but for me coming from a 100w station in the shack it feels almost like cheating somehow, but in reverse? like the challenge is the fun part. anyway i just wanted to share because im pretty happy with it and also curious if anyone has tips for a good next build. i keep looking at the kx2 but thats a lot of money when building is so satisfying

i was in basically the same spot about a year ago and ended up getting the Yaesu FT-65 which is kind of the newer version of the FT-60 in a slimmer body. paid around $80 for it i think. its been totally fine for repeaters and i've made contacts 15 miles out on simplex from a decent hilltop. for 8 miles of flat farmland you should be pretty good with almost any HT honestly depending on antenna. one thing nobody told me when i started — the stock rubber duck antenna that comes with most HTs isnt great, like its genuinely worth throwing $20-30 at a better aftermarket antenna pretty early on. made a noticeable difference for me. anyway good luck with it, the local repeater scene is a lot of fun once you get settled in

yeah im going, me and Dave from our club are carpooling out there. doors open at 7 i think, thats when the serious buyers show up anyway. last year i grabbed a barely used 706 for way under market, guy just wanted it gone. you gotta be there early or the good stuff walks out the door before you even get your coffee

the stock DSP filter on those is pretty bad yeah. i did the same thing on mine maybe 4 years ago and went with a Murata filter instead, cant remember the exact part number off the top of my head but it made SSB much tighter. did you notice any difference on CW or were you mostly running phone? also word of warning to anyone else reading this, the mars mod on the 857 technically voids the warranty but more importantly just double check your local regs before transmitting outside the amateur bands, seems obvious but ive seen people get confused about what the mod actually does vs what theyre allowed to do with it

Direct QSLing has the highest success rate at 63%, and it's significantly cheaper than mailing out physical cards when you factor in ARRL award application costs. Always check QRZ.com before sending bureau cards - many DX stations won't answer bureau cards, and bureaus spend hours redirecting cards that won't get answered anyway. For serious DXing, budget for direct QSLs to rare stations.

so ive been trying to find out whats happening in the next few months, our local club used to post a calendar on their website but i think nobody updates it anymore. dayton is the obvious one but thats a haul for me, was wondering if anybody knows of smaller regional swapfests or club hamfests coming up in the midwest area. also does your club do anything besides the monthly nets, ours does a yearly picnic which is fun but thats about it

I'm just getting into contesting and this sounds amazing! Are you planning to share the Python scripts? Would love to learn how you're handling the antenna switching logic — do you have automatic band plans programmed in?

so ive been chasing a 3B8 for probably three months now, every time they were active i just could not get through. tried everything i thought i knew and kept getting nowhere. running about 400w into a 3 element yagi at 45 feet so its not like i was totally outgunned equipment wise. what finally worked was a combination of things but the biggest change was actually listening longer before i ever keyed up. i used to just jump in when i heard the DX come back to someone near my call area, but that was wrong. now i spend like the first 5-10 minutes just mapping out where the DX is actually listening because they almost never work straight up — its almost always split and they drift around in that window more than people realize. the other thing that helped a ton was sending my call exactly once and then waiting. i was a double-sender before, kept thinking more calls meant better odds but honestly you just end up QRMing the guy who the DX is actually trying to work and it makes everyone's life worse including yours. also timing matters so much more than i thought. i started watching the rhythm of how the DX operator sequences through callsigns and trying to key up maybe a half second after the pileup peak, not at the very start of the opening. hard to describe but once you start hearing it it makes sense. anyway just figured id share since i know pileups are genuinely frustrating and theres not a lot of good practical advice out there beyond the generic stuff

so ive been interested in ham radio for a while now, like probably a couple years just kind of lurking and watching youtube videos but never actually pulled the trigger on studying for the test. my neighbor is a ham and keeps telling me to just do it but i dont even know where to start honestly. is there like one resource that most people use or do you kind of have to piece it together from different places? also how hard is the technician exam actually, i have a pretty decent background with electronics from messing around with hobby stuff but not like formal training or anything. and do i need to memorize the actual question pool or is it more conceptual? i signed up for a hamstudy account like a month ago and did maybe 20 questions and then got distracted so i feel like i basically havent started. just want to know if theres a better approach before i sink more time into something thats not working

yeah the band privilege chart on the arrl site is way better than trying to read the actual FCC text. i spent like two hours on part 97 before i just looked up a chart and it took five minutes. the coworker thing though, i would just not do it, not worth the hassle if someone files a complaint even if you think it was innocent

so ive been running APRS for about 6 months now, mostly just tracking, and that part works fine — i can see my station on aprs.fi no problem, digipeating seems to be working and my packets are getting out there. but i started trying to use the messaging side of it and i cant for the life of me get messages to actually go through to another station. sent like 4 or 5 messages to a buddy of mine who runs a Kenwood D72 and he never got any of them. he can see my beacon but messages are just gone. im running a TM-D710G with the internal TNC, path set to WIDE1-1,WIDE2-1 which i thought was pretty standard. im in a pretty decent coverage area, there's an igate like 8 miles from me. wondering if its a path issue or maybe something with how i have the messaging configured on the radio itself. the manual for this thing is not exactly helpful. anybody dealt with this before? its frustrating because the tracking works perfectly so i feel like im close but missing something obvious

Dont be embarrassed at all, everyone has to do their first check-in at some point and honestly most net controls are super patient with new folks. For a typical Tuesday evening 2m net, when the net control says something like "net is now open for check-ins" you just key up during a pause and give your callsign phonetically — so like Whiskey Alpha one Echo Tango Lima or however yours goes. Some nets want name and location too, just listen to what everyone else is saying before you and copy that format. Traffic in that context just means do you have any announcements or messages to pass to the group, like if you're selling a radio or there's a club meeting coming up. Most of the time you just say "no traffic" or nothing at all and net control will move on. Honestly just jump in, the worst that happens is net control asks you to repeat yourself and thats totally normal even for people who've been doing it for years. The 2m nets especially the local club ones are pretty laid back.

oh man i remember my first one, it was a 5k charity run and i was so nervous i basically triple checked my radio every five minutes before it started. honestly the best thing i can tell you is that having an experienced operator next to you is huge, just watch how they handle things and dont be afraid to let them take the lead on anything youre unsure about. nobody expects you to be perfect on your first activation. the thing that helped me most was just writing down the net control callsign and the frequencies on a little notepad i kept in my pocket, basic stuff but when youre standing in the cold at 7am your brain does funny things. also make sure your radio is fully charged the night before and bring a spare battery if you have one. the actual event usually feels way less stressful than you think its going to once things get rolling, theres something about having a job to do that settles the nerves down pretty quick.

Welcome to the hobby! The amateur radio community is incredibly welcoming. Most operators remember what it was like to be new, and they're more than happy to help you along the way. Just give your callsign clearly and your location - that's it for most nets. You'll do fine!

I went with the FT-991A as my first HF rig and love the versatility. I started my shack with a Yaesu all-mode radio which provided a versatility of things I could do, even with just a Technician license. The 3:1 tuner limitation isn't a big deal if you have decent antennas - most compromise antennas can be tweaked to fall within that range.

End-fed antennas including single-band half-wave designs work well in the classic SOTA configuration with one end supported by a lightweight fishing pole. I use a 20m EFHW that's pretty close to 50 ohms - no tuner needed. For multi-band work though, you'll want that tuner.

I had the exact same problem when I was working toward my first DXCC! Turned out I had a few QSOs with stations that were portable or /MM and they didn't qualify for the entity credit I thought they did. One was a station I worked in what I thought was Greenland but he was actually /OZ so it counted as Denmark. The other issue was LoTW confirmations sometimes take a while to sync with the DXCC system - usually happens within a day but I've seen it take longer. If you're sure the confirmations are there you might want to contact the DXCC desk directly, they're pretty helpful about sorting these things out.